Act 2, Scene 3

The same. A Room in the Palace.

[Enter LEONTES, ANTIGONUS, Lords, and other Attendants.]
Leontes
890 Nor night nor day no rest: it is but weakness
891 To bear the matter thus,—mere weakness. If
892 The cause were not in being,—part o' the cause,
893 She the adultress; for the harlot king
894 Is quite beyond mine arm, out of the blank
895 And level of my brain, plot-proof; but she
896 I can hook to me:—say that she were gone,
897 Given to the fire, a moiety of my rest
898 Might come to me again.—Who's there?
First Attendant
899 My lord?
Leontes
900 How does the boy?
First Attendant
901 He took good rest to-night;
902 'Tis hop'd his sickness is discharg'd.
Leontes
903 To see his nobleness!
904 Conceiving the dishonour of his mother,
905 He straight declin'd, droop'd, took it deeply,
906 Fasten'd and fix'd the shame on't in himself,
907 Threw off his spirit, his appetite, his sleep,
908 And downright languish'd.—Leave me solely:—go,
909 See how he fares.—
[Exit FIRST ATTENDANT.]
Leontes
910 Fie, fie! no thought of him;
911 The very thought of my revenges that way
912 Recoil upon me: in himself too mighty,
913 And in his parties, his alliance,—let him be,
914 Until a time may serve: for present vengeance,
915 Take it on her. Camillo and Polixenes
916 Laugh at me; make their pastime at my sorrow:
917 They should not laugh if I could reach them; nor
918 Shall she within my power.
[Enter PAULINA, with a Child.]
First Lord
919 You must not enter.
Paulina
920 Nay, rather, good my lords, be second to me:
921 Fear you his tyrannous passion more, alas,
922 Than the queen's life? a gracious innocent soul,
923 More free than he is jealous.
Antigonus
924 That's enough.
Second Attendant
925 Madam, he hath not slept to-night; commanded
926 None should come at him.
Paulina
927 Not so hot, good sir;
928 I come to bring him sleep. 'Tis such as you,—
929 That creep like shadows by him, and do sigh
930 At each his needless heavings,—such as you
931 Nourish the cause of his awaking: I
932 Do come, with words as med'cinal as true,
933 Honest as either, to purge him of that humour
934 That presses him from sleep.
Leontes
935 What noise there, ho?
Paulina
936 No noise, my lord; but needful conference
937 About some gossips for your highness.
Leontes
938 How!—
939 Away with that audacious lady!—Antigonus,
940 I charg'd thee that she should not come about me:
941 I knew she would.
Antigonus
942 I told her so, my lord,
943 On your displeasure's peril, and on mine,
944 She should not visit you.
Leontes
945 What, canst not rule her?
Paulina
946 From all dishonesty he can: in this,—
947 Unless he take the course that you have done,
948 Commit me for committing honour,—trust it,
949 He shall not rule me.
Antigonus
950 La you now, you hear
951 When she will take the rein, I let her run;
952 But she'll not stumble.
Paulina
953 Good my liege, I come,—
954 And, I beseech you, hear me, who professes
955 Myself your loyal servant, your physician,
956 Your most obedient counsellor: yet that dares
957 Less appear so, in comforting your evils,
958 Than such as most seem yours:—I say I come
959 From your good queen.
Leontes
960 Good queen!
Paulina
961 Good queen, my lord,
962 Good queen: I say, good queen;
963 And would by combat make her good, so were I
964 A man, the worst about you.
Leontes
965 Force her hence!
Paulina
966 Let him that makes but trifles of his eyes
967 First hand me: on mine own accord I'll off;
968 But first I'll do my errand—The good queen,
969 For she is good, hath brought you forth a daughter;
970 Here 'tis; commends it to your blessing.
[Laying down the child.]
Leontes
971 Out!
972 A mankind witch! Hence with her, out o' door:
973 A most intelligencing bawd!
Paulina
974 Not so:
975 I am as ignorant in that as you
976 In so entitling me; and no less honest
977 Than you are mad; which is enough, I'll warrant,
978 As this world goes, to pass for honest.
Leontes
979 Traitors!
980 Will you not push her out? Give her the bastard:—
981 Thou dotard!
[To ANTIGONUS]
Leontes
982 Thou art woman-tir'd, unroosted
983 By thy Dame Partlet here:—take up the bastard;
984 Take't up, I say; give't to thy crone.
Paulina
985 For ever
986 Unvenerable be thy hands, if thou
987 Tak'st up the princess by that forced baseness
988 Which he has put upon't!
Leontes
989 He dreads his wife.
Paulina
990 So I would you did; then 'twere past all doubt
991 You'd call your children yours.
Leontes
992 A nest of traitors?
Antigonus
993 I am none, by this good light.
Paulina
994 Nor I; nor any,
995 But one that's here; and that's himself: for he
996 The sacred honour of himself, his queen's,
997 His hopeful son's, his babe's, betrays to slander,
998 Whose sting is sharper than the sword's; and will not,—
999 For, as the case now stands, it is a curse
1000 He cannot be compell'd to't,—once remove
1001 The root of his opinion, which is rotten
1002 As ever oak or stone was sound.
Leontes
1003 A callat
1004 Of boundless tongue, who late hath beat her husband,
1005 And now baits me!—This brat is none of mine;
1006 It is the issue of Polixenes:
1007 Hence with it! and together with the dam,
1008 Commit them to the fire.
Paulina
1009 It is yours!
1010 And, might we lay the old proverb to your charge,
1011 So like you 'tis the worse.—Behold, my lords,
1012 Although the print be little, the whole matter
1013 And copy of the father,—eye, nose, lip,
1014 The trick of his frown, his forehead; nay, the valley,
1015 The pretty dimples of his chin and cheek; his smiles;
1016 The very mould and frame of hand, nail, finger:—
1017 And thou, good goddess Nature, which hast made it
1018 So like to him that got it, if thou hast
1019 The ordering of the mind too, 'mongst all colours
1020 No yellow in't, lest she suspect, as he does,
1021 Her children not her husband's!
Leontes
1022 A gross hag!
1023 And, losel, thou art worthy to be hang'd
1024 That wilt not stay her tongue.
Antigonus
1025 Hang all the husbands
1026 That cannot do that feat, you'll leave yourself
1027 Hardly one subject.
Leontes
1028 Once more, take her hence.
Paulina
1029 A most unworthy and unnatural lord
1030 Can do no more.
Leontes
1031 I'll have thee burn'd.
Paulina
1032 I care not.
1033 It is an heretic that makes the fire,
1034 Not she which burns in't. I'll not call you tyrant
1035 But this most cruel usage of your queen,—
1036 Not able to produce more accusation
1037 Than your own weak-hing'd fancy,—something savours
1038 Of tyranny, and will ignoble make you,
1039 Yea, scandalous to the world.
Leontes
1040 On your allegiance,
1041 Out of the chamber with her! Were I a tyrant,
1042 Where were her life? She durst not call me so,
1043 If she did know me one. Away with her!
Paulina
1044 I pray you, do not push me; I'll be gone.—
1045 Look to your babe, my lord; 'tis yours: Jove send her
1046 A better guiding spirit!—What needs these hands?
1047 You that are thus so tender o'er his follies,
1048 Will never do him good, not one of you.
1049 So, so:—farewell; we are gone.
[Exit.]
Leontes
1050 Thou, traitor, hast set on thy wife to this.
1051 My child?—away with't.—even thou, that hast
1052 A heart so tender o'er it, take it hence,
1053 And see it instantly consum'd with fire;
1054 Even thou, and none but thou. Take it up straight:
1055 Within this hour bring me word 'tis done,—
1056 And by good testimony,—or I'll seize thy life,
1057 With that thou else call'st thine. If thou refuse,
1058 And wilt encounter with my wrath, say so;
1059 The bastard-brains with these my proper hands
1060 Shall I dash out. Go, take it to the fire;
1061 For thou set'st on thy wife.
Antigonus
1062 I did not, sir:
1063 These lords, my noble fellows, if they please,
1064 Can clear me in't.
Lords
1065 We can:—my royal liege,
1066 He is not guilty of her coming hither.
Leontes
1067 You're liars all.
First Lord
1068 Beseech your highness, give us better credit:
1069 We have always truly serv'd you; and beseech
1070 So to esteem of us: and on our knees we beg,—
1071 As recompense of our dear services,
1072 Past and to come,—that you do change this purpose,
1073 Which, being so horrible, so bloody, must
1074 Lead on to some foul issue: we all kneel.
Leontes
1075 I am a feather for each wind that blows:—
1076 Shall I live on, to see this bastard kneel
1077 And call me father? better burn it now,
1078 Than curse it then. But, be it; let it live:—
1079 It shall not neither.—
[To ANTIGONUS.]
Leontes
1080 You, sir, come you hither:
1081 You that have been so tenderly officious
1082 With Lady Margery, your midwife, there,
1083 To save this bastard's life,—for 'tis a bastard,
1084 So sure as this beard's grey,—what will you adventure
1085 To save this brat's life?
Antigonus
1086 Anything, my lord,
1087 That my ability may undergo,
1088 And nobleness impose: at least, thus much;
1089 I'll pawn the little blood which I have left
1090 To save the innocent:—anything possible.
Leontes
1091 It shall be possible. Swear by this sword
1092 Thou wilt perform my bidding.
Antigonus
1093 I will, my lord.
Leontes
1094 Mark, and perform it,—seest thou? for the fail
1095 Of any point in't shall not only be
1096 Death to thyself, but to thy lewd-tongu'd wife,
1097 Whom for this time we pardon. We enjoin thee,
1098 As thou art liegeman to us, that thou carry
1099 This female bastard hence; and that thou bear it
1100 To some remote and desert place, quite out
1101 Of our dominions; and that there thou leave it,
1102 Without more mercy, to it own protection
1103 And favour of the climate. As by strange fortune
1104 It came to us, I do in justice charge thee,
1105 On thy soul's peril and thy body's torture,
1106 That thou commend it strangely to some place
1107 Where chance may nurse or end it. Take it up.
Antigonus
1108 I swear to do this, though a present death
1109 Had been more merciful.—Come on, poor babe:
1110 Some powerful spirit instruct the kites and ravens
1111 To be thy nurses! Wolves and bears, they say,
1112 Casting their savageness aside, have done
1113 Like offices of pity.—Sir, be prosperous
1114 In more than this deed does require!—and blessing,
1115 Against this cruelty, fight on thy side,
1116 Poor thing, condemn'd to loss!
[Exit with the child.]
Leontes
1117 No, I'll not rear
1118 Another's issue.
Second Attendant
1119 Please your highness, posts
1120 From those you sent to the oracle are come
1121 An hour since: Cleomenes and Dion,
1122 Being well arriv'd from Delphos, are both landed,
1123 Hasting to the court.
First Lord
1124 So please you, sir, their speed
1125 Hath been beyond account.
Leontes
1126 Twenty-three days
1127 They have been absent: 'tis good speed; foretells
1128 The great Apollo suddenly will have
1129 The truth of this appear. Prepare you, lords;
1130 Summon a session, that we may arraign
1131 Our most disloyal lady; for, as she hath
1132 Been publicly accus'd, so shall she have
1133 A just and open trial. While she lives,
1134 My heart will be a burden to me. Leave me;
1135 And think upon my bidding.
[Exeunt.]

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Notes

TLN 890rhetorical device
“Nor night nor day no rest: it is but weakness”
The triple negative 'Nor... nor... no' piles up denials to convey absolute sleeplessness. The opening words echo Othello's 'Not poppy, nor mandragora... shall ever medicine thee to that sweet sleep / Which thou owedst yesterday' — both plays use the loss of sleep as the outward sign of jealous torment taking over a man's mind.
TLN 894archaic vocab
“out of the blank / And level of my brain”
'Blank' and 'level' are gunnery terms. The 'blank' is the white centre of an archery or shooting target — the bull's-eye — and 'level' means the line of aim. Leontes means Polixenes is out of range, beyond his power to strike: he cannot reach him because Polixenes has fled to Bohemia. The metaphor makes Leontes's jealous rage into a weapon that can only fire at Hermione, the target within reach.
TLN 897archaic vocab
“Given to the fire, a moiety of my rest”
'Given to the fire' means burned — Leontes fantasizes having Hermione executed by burning. 'Moiety' (pronounced MOY-uh-tee) means half. Elizabethan law prescribed burning for some capital offences, notably adultery by a queen, making the threat legally recognizable to the first audience. Leontes reasons: if the cause of my sleeplessness (Hermione) were removed — killed — half my rest might return.
TLN 932archaic vocab
“words as med'cinal as true, / Honest as either, to purge him of that humour”
Paulina frames her confrontation as medicine, not attack. 'Purge' and 'humour' are medical vocabulary from the Galenic theory still standard in Shakespeare's England: a 'humour' is one of the four bodily fluids (blood, phlegm, choler, melancholy) whose balance governed health and mood. A 'purge' is a medicine that clears a harmful excess. Leontes's jealousy is diagnosed as a bad humour — an imbalance in his constitution — and Paulina as the physician who will correct it.
TLN 936archaic vocab
“needful conference / About some gossips for your highness”
'Gossips' here does not mean idle talkers but godparents. In Elizabethan usage a child's godparents — the sponsors at baptism who 'spoke for' the baby — were called 'gossips' (from Old English 'godsibb,' a spiritual kinship). Paulina is pretending she has come to discuss who should stand as godmother and godfather at the newborn baby's christening. The audience knows she is really there to confront the king.
TLN 963historical topical
“would by combat make her good, so were I / A man, the worst about you”
Paulina invokes 'trial by combat,' the legal procedure in which a champion could fight to prove a disputed claim — here, Hermione's honesty. In medieval law, the truthfulness of an accusation could be tested by having the accuser and accused (or their champions) fight, on the theory that God would give victory to the just party. Paulina says she would fight the worst man at court to prove the queen innocent, if only she were a man.
historical Trial by combat and the gage
TLN 972archaic vocab
“A mankind witch! Hence with her, out o' door: / A most intelligencing bawd!”
'Mankind' here means 'mannish' or 'masculine' — a woman who acts like a man, fierce and domineering. A 'mankind witch' is thus a viragine who uses unnatural, masculine boldness (imagined as a kind of dark magic). 'Intelligencing' means acting as a spy or go-between who passes secret messages: Leontes accuses Paulina of being a pimp-and-informer for Hermione, carrying the queen's illicit communications.
TLN 982archaic vocab
“Thou art woman-tir'd, unroosted / By thy Dame Partlet here”
'Woman-tir'd' means 'henpecked' — pulled at and dominated by a woman, as a hawk is 'tired' (from French 'tirer,' to pull) at its prey. 'Unroosted' means driven from your roost, your rightful resting place, like a bird pushed off its perch. 'Dame Partlet' is a stock name from medieval beast-fable for a bossy hen, derived from the hen in the Reynard the Fox tradition (where the rooster is Chauntecleer and his wife is Dame Partlet). Leontes is mocking Antigonus as a man ruled by his wife.
TLN 1003archaic vocab
“A callat / Of boundless tongue”
'Callat' (also 'callet') is an archaic, strongly contemptuous word for a woman of loose morals or a scold — a slut or strumpet. It was a fighting word, the equivalent of 'whore,' used specifically of women who overstepped their social and sexual boundaries. Leontes deploys it against Paulina as the most violent single-word insult he can find for a woman who dares to speak her mind at a king.
TLN 1012archaic vocab
“the print be little, the whole matter / And copy of the father”
'Print' and 'copy' are printing metaphors: the baby is a small-scale printed impression ('print') taken from the same original mould ('copy') as Leontes. A 'copy' in the printing sense was the manuscript or plate from which prints were made — the master from which copies are struck. Paulina uses the vocabulary of the press to argue that the child is Leontes's exact reproduction in miniature, which makes bastardy impossible.
TLN 1017archaic vocab
“good goddess Nature, which hast made it / So like to him that got it, if thou hast / The ordering of the mind too, 'mongst all colours / No yellow in't”
Paulina addresses Nature as a goddess who shapes both the body (which she has already given the baby) and the mind. 'Yellow' was the colour of jealousy in Elizabethan iconography — yellow-green or 'sallow' was associated with bile, cowardice, and envy. Paulina's prayer is that Nature will leave no jealousy in the child's mind: she should not grow up to suspect her children as Leontes suspects his. It is a deft, pointed prayer that implies the father's jealousy is itself unnatural.
TLN 1023archaic vocab
“losel, thou art worthy to be hang'd / That wilt not stay her tongue”
'Losel' (also 'lozel') is an archaic word for a worthless, dissolute person — a scoundrel or good-for-nothing. Leontes hurls it at Antigonus for failing to silence Paulina. The word carries connotations of someone who has lost his worth (from Old English 'losian,' to be lost), making it a counterpart to calling Antigonus a hen-pecked nonentity.
TLN 1033historical topical
“It is an heretic that makes the fire, / Not she which burns in't”
Paulina turns Leontes's threat of burning back on him: in law and theology, it is the person who condemns someone to burn as a heretic who is the real heretic, not the martyr in the flames. Burning was the prescribed punishment for heresy in Catholic and (to a lesser extent) Protestant practice. Paulina reframes Leontes as the persecutor and Hermione as the innocent martyr, the one whose faith — whose chastity — the fire tests and proves.
TLN 1075rhetorical device
“I am a feather for each wind that blows”
Leontes catches himself mid-reversal: he has just been about to relent under the lords' begging, and he checks himself with this image — he is as easily blown this way and that as a feather. The simile is a moment of rare self-awareness, where Leontes briefly sees his own instability before his tyranny closes over him again. The image of a person without inner stability, controlled by external winds, was a common emblem for weak will or fickle fortune.
TLN 1081archaic vocab
“so tenderly officious / With Lady Margery, your midwife, there”
'Officious' here does not mean nosy or overbearing (its modern sense) but 'eager to perform a service, obliging' — the Latin 'officiosus' meant dutiful. Leontes means Antigonus was too helpfully involved with Paulina ('Lady Margery'), condescendingly nicknamed as if she were a common midwife rather than a noblewoman. 'Lady Margery' was also a then-current slang term for a midwife or officious woman, belittling Paulina by rank.
TLN 1091historical topical
“Swear by this sword / Thou wilt perform my bidding”
Swearing by the sword was a formal oath on the hilt of a weapon. The hilt of a sword formed a cross — crossguard plus grip — so an oath on the sword-hilt was structurally an oath on the cross, binding the swearer by the most solemn Christian obligation. This is the same gesture Hamlet uses when making Horatio and the soldiers swear on his sword. Leontes forces Antigonus to bind himself by a sacred oath before naming the commission.
TLN 1097archaic vocab
“We enjoin thee, / As thou art liegeman to us, that thou carry / This female bastard hence”
'Liegeman' means a vassal bound to a feudal lord — the word comes from the feudal system in which every man owed obedience to his lord ('liege') and the king was the highest lord of all. Leontes invokes the feudal bond of personal loyalty to override Antigonus's moral objection to abandoning the baby: your oath to your king compels you. 'Enjoin' means to command or order with the force of a formal injunction.
TLN 1110classical allusion
“kites and ravens / To be thy nurses! Wolves and bears, they say, / Casting their savageness aside, have done / Like offices of pity”
Antigonus's prayer for wild animals to nurse the baby draws on a tradition of foundlings miraculously suckled by beasts — above all Romulus and Remus, the founders of Rome, suckled by a she-wolf. The 'offices of pity' performed by wolves and bears recall this motif: the very beasts of prey relent toward innocent children where their human masters will not. Kites and ravens were birds of omen and carrion — invoking them as nurses measures the extremity of the abandonment.
TLN 1119classical allusion
“posts / From those you sent to the oracle are come / An hour since: Cleomenes and Dion, / Being well arriv'd from Delphos”
The oracle is at 'Delphos,' which Shakespeare (following his source, Greene's Pandosto) treats as an island. The real oracle was at Delphi, on the Greek mainland, where the god Apollo's priestess delivered cryptic prophecies. This is the oracle that Leontes sent Cleomenes and Dion to consult — its sealed verdict will be read at Hermione's trial in the next scene. The play pronounces 'Delphos' throughout, blending the mainland oracle at Delphi with the island of Delos sacred to Apollo's birth.
classical Apollo and the oracle at Delphos
TLN 1130archaic vocab
“Summon a session, that we may arraign / Our most disloyal lady”
A 'session' is a formal sitting of a law court; to 'arraign' a person is to call them before that court to answer a criminal charge. Leontes is ordering that a formal criminal trial ('session') be convened to charge Hermione with treason and adultery. 'Arraign' comes from Anglo-French 'araisnier,' to call to account. This prepares the audience for the trial scene that follows in Act 3, Scene 2.